Wildland Fire Applications

Wildland fire applications refers to the translation of fundamental physical and ecological fire science into applied, operationally relevant standards, guidelines, and applications to support wildland fire and land managers. The integrated application of physical fire science and ecological fire science is critical for rendering improvements and newly developed decision support tools, knowledge, and training materials to respond to multiple rapidly unfolding challenges. These challenges include human health concerns and risk associated with expanding wildland-urban interface.

A core component of this research is the development, testing, and refinement of next-generation wildland fire simulation tools with fire managers. These tools fill critical decision support gaps by enabling the exploration of prescribed fire scenarios and outcomes of actual burn units, which supports the enhancement of fire operations planning and landscape-scale fuels management strategies. This work also helps guide improvement of firefighter and prescribed fire practitioner training by facilitating the safe exploration of complex burning conditions.

Featured Research

• The Hot-Dry-Windy Index (HDWI) real-time product suite  - The Hot-Dry-Windy Index (HDW) was designed to help users determine which days are more likely to have adverse atmospheric conditions that make it more difficult to manage a wildland fire. It combines weather data from the surface and low levels of the atmosphere into a first-look product.
• Real-time weather forecast outputs provide smoke forecasting products for Air Resource Advisors across the Nation. NRS scientists use these forecasts to drive smoke products developed by the Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program, to validate forecast accuracy, and to develop new products designed to help forecasters anticipate potential smoke impacts and dispersion.
• Terrestrial Laser Scanning can provide fuel structure and biomass estimates to describe forest conditions and management outcomes and gather fuel inputs for fire behavior models.
• QUIC-Fire allows managers to quickly explore how different ignition, weather, and fuel scenarios may interact during prescribed burns to produce different fire behavior and ecological outcomes, as well as test the ability of treatment results to halt or alter potential future wildfire.